Also raises the q of what sexual desire actually is, given that it can be projected onto almost anything (ie anything can be a fetish). And so does being asexual mean lacking that ability or wish to project?

Didn't read the article but I've read about this before. Interesting, especially in the world we live in. Also seen interviews with people who say that they lost their sex-drive totally after a certain age. I find that interesting because they can compare the two states. They definitely seemed (or claimed to be) happier when their dick stopped telling them what to do.

Also raises the q of what sexual desire actually is, given that it can be projected onto almost anything (ie anything can be a fetish). And so does being asexual mean lacking that ability or wish to project?

I don't think asexuality can be reduced to a tendency not to fetishize. A fetish is the sexualisation of something that's not inherently sexual, isn't it? If you're just attracted to someone because, er, you find them attractive, that's not a fetish, as I understand the term.

Well yeah but if you fancy someone just because you think they're hot that's different from being massively obsessed with feet (or even tits, or whatever). I don't think fetishism is a precondition for sexual attraction, anyway.

Yeah, I don't think fetishisation is necessarily a pre-condition for sexual attraction. I'm just saying that it's not the fetishised thing that creates a fetish but rather the way that it is treated. That's my understanding anyway.

I don't think asexuality can be reduced to a tendency not to fetishize. A fetish is the sexualisation of something that's not inherently sexual, isn't it? If you're just attracted to someone because, er, you find them attractive, that's not a fetish, as I understand the term.

well, the idea is that everything is open to be fetishised, that nothing is inherently sexual (or not inherently sexual, depending on how you look at it, i guess). not saying i know where i stand on this, but it's certainly a body of thought (as it were)...

i always think of the derek and clive 'getting the horn' sketch when I have this conversation...

in (some) psychotherapeutic terms sexual desire would be linked to cathecting an object/investing it with libidinal energy (not sure if i have the terms right), i think.

and there's also the matter of why you find people attractive - it's so intensely subjective that it's bound up with lots of things in one's head. And how much finding 'typically attractive' people attractive because society deems them attractive and you've absorbed that throughout your life etc etc....

I think whoever said that might have been talking out of their (no doubt highly fetishised) ringpiece.

why? there's nothing that sex is necessarily about, other than some kind of exercise of libidinal energy (insert any less wanky term you like). it's (obv) not definitively about procreation, it's not about anything you can pin down very easily (which is totally consistent with the fact that for a lot of people it represents the same/very similar things, or at least seems to).

as slowtrain says, what is sex? very good question. Defining what it is/what is and what isn't 'natural' has of course been used in the past (and continues to be, obv) to very nefarious means.

that's why i'm not sure what 'asexual' would exactly mean, or whether it's another way of telling people they're not 'normal'.

Well yeah but if you fancy someone just because you think they're hot that's different from being massively obsessed with feet (or even tits, or whatever). I don't think fetishism is a precondition for sexual attraction, anyway.

why do you think they're hot? cos their nose is just the right distance from their mouth, and their eyes are just *this* far apart? or because their personality has this something you can't define, which does it for you but for soemone sitting next to you is completely not there?

can't pretend i know the answer of course, but it's clear something is going on when one person finds another attractive, that is not just inexplicable 'magic'/is only expicable by 'because i just do'. Particularly when you don't know the person from Adam/Eve.

Edit: Point being that this is just as much a fetish as anything else, in the sense that it's something unique(ish) to you that leads you to project your libido onto that.